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I have 3 cats, 2 dogs and a small house with no mud room, basement, hallways, separating doors, or dog or cat proof room. Yes, I know it wasn’t very good planning on my part. I am married and my husband goes to work, while I stay home.
I am a novice dog owner and even more novice at keeping cats as well. My bull breed mix is 80-100 pounds and is almost 2, and my rat terrier chihuahua mix is 9 months. Two of the cats are almost 2, and the senior one is 12.
I need help because it is icy and snowing with snow on the ground, and my dogs can no longer stay outside and wait for me to get to them. They’re unhappy inside their crates, and my eventual goal is to have them roam around the house with no issues with peeing or pooping, no issues of running around everywhere, and no issues of them bothering the cats because my husband doesn’t like it.
I can successfully keep them reasonably calm in the living room while I’m there, and I can get a glass of water or something from the kitchen if I tell them to stay. But issues of them just loose without me looking at both of them is that they will get into things and chew or eat them (stuffed pillows or other stuffed things, garbage, etc), eat cat poop, pee, or jump on the mattresses, which my husband doesn’t like.
The winter is much worse than last year, and keeping track of 5 pets is just so much. If they dogs and cats would get along somehow, I think that would help a lot. I just don’t know what to do concerning the litterbox, because my bull breed mix is very adamant about eating stuff from there unless I change it constantly. So when I let him out of his crate, I do change it, but I can’t trust him to roam around while I’m busy with something, or away. The little dog has issues with escaping her crate and peeing, and bothering the cats.
I started out having her sleeping in bed with me and we’d go to bed at 12 and shed wake me up anywhere from 8-10 the next morning to go potty. As soon as I put her outside she goes, so she knows she’s supposed to go outside. But she refuses to hold it during the day. She pees probably 10 times and poops 2 times. I will bring her inside and look away for two seconds and she’ll have peed everywhere. So I decided to try crate training her. She doesn’t wake me up to take her out until 9-10 in the morning. So she can obviously hold her pee, she just refuses to during the day? I don’t know how to fix this. It’s getting very frustrating.
12 weeks is too young to expect reliability with housebreaking. remember, she’s a tiny baby puppy right now. you need to teach her a cue (we uses a bell hanging off the doorknob), praise her every time she uses the cue, and you need to make sure she goes out every half hour when she’s awake, immediately before and after all naps, playtime, and food. at this age, any accident is the human’s fault. 😉
good luck. puppies are trying at the best of times.
Time, they will learn to coexist with each other.
They may not be best friend but they will be able to be in the same room ect and tolerant each other.
We had 3 cats and then got a dog. Get a pet gate that also has a small door in the bigger gate. Approx $60 at pet smart. Use a strap or something to hold the small door open. Depending on the size of your dog if it can fit through the small door get a bungee cord and use it to make the small door smallerUse the gate to give the cats a totally separate space to “escape” from the dog. We did this and put the litter boxes in that room, and also used that room to feed them. It will take a while for the peace and harmony your hoping for. if your cat has claws I can’t help there ours do not, but I will tell you that your sweet little cat will probably make sounds that seem to be coming from the depths of hell towards the dog ours did. Our dog learned to back down from the cats so we didn’t worry about aggression towards the cats. Good luck and remember to pay equal attention to all of them to prevent jealousy.